Hello, this is Sailor Venus, your local archaeologist! When I am not your role-playing director, I can be found in the forests of Belize looking for really cool stuff left by ancient peoples. I do this so I can learn more about those people, such as who they were and what they did in their spare time to make a living and have fun. My research has focused on the Maya of Mesoamerica. Sit back and read some interesting facts!

If you see a symbol next to any of the site names, then that means I have been there!

You may have heard the Maya mentioned a lot a few years back, because misinterpretations of their calendar system started a fairly big uproar about the end of the world. As you know, it didn’t happen, but we’ll talk about that later. The Maya were a diverse, really big culture that spanned across Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Honduras and El Salvador. There’s a map below if you don’t know where those places are. That’s a lot of ground to cover! As you can imagine, not all of the Maya were the same, but archaeologists recognize this group of people shared many cultural elements, like their calendar system. In fact, the Maya are still around today and their descendants live in the countries I mentioned above. However, I am going to focus on the Maya who lived from roughly 2000 B.C.E to 1500 A.D.


A map of Central America! We are visiting the places in green.

Let’s visit our first archaeological site on today’s tour: Tikal.


You’ll find this site in Guatemala. Tikal is likely the most well-known of the Maya archaeological sites. You’ve probably seen it before, especially because portions of it were actually seen in Star Wars films. Tikal is well known for a reason, because it was very powerful during its prime. In fact, archaeologists know much of the politics and warfare in this region during this time depended on whether you counted Tikal or Calakmul (another really powerful site) as your ally.



The major buildings in the core of Tikal are connected by huge roads called ‘sacbe.’ Other archaeological sites have sacbe, too. These roads helped connect distant areas of a site and made travel easier. The majority of excavations and research have taken place in the North Acropolis. The North Acropolis has eight funerary temples built over a 300-year period. What’s really neat about the Maya is that they loved to build on top of other buildings. So, let’s say a new leader wanted to build an even bigger pyramid. Instead of tearing the old one down, he’d build on top of the old one. So, it’s kind of like those toys where you have a doll inside of a doll inside of a doll, except you have a building on top of an old building built on top of an even older building. Of course, this makes digging them rather complicated for the archaeologists!


The North Acropolis during a ceremony.


Stela 16. Stela are stone monuments the Maya built to commemorate rulers and special events.


A greenstone mask from Burial 85.


Chichen Itza, in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, is also another popular tourist destination. By the time Chichen Itza was built, many things had changed. Living in the interior of Mesoamerica (like where Tikal is located) was no longer popular, the political system no longer favored divine kings, and the Gulf Coast began to boom economically. Chichen Itza took advantage of the weakening influence in the interior and that city established itself as a powerful center. Chichen Itza became one of the largest Maya cites.


The Castillo - Do you see the snake?

The architecture and art from Tikal and Chichen Itza even look different. The style found at Chichen Itza is in the ‘Puuc’ style, which favors decorative mosaics near the top of buildings. Let’s talk about some of those buildings. The Caracol is a unique round structure placed on top of two rectangular structures. Round temples were often associated with the wind-deity aspect of Quetzalcoatl (K’uk’ulcan). It has a stairway in this structure resembles a snail shell, hence its name in Spanish. Some of the windows in this building line up with important astronomical events, such as the equinox.

The Caracol

Another interesting feature in Chichen Itza are the ballcourts. The Maya used the ballcourts to play a game with a rubber ball. The specifics of this ballgame are not clearly understood by archaeologists, but it required some heavy padding and, perhaps, some figurative or literal death. The rubber ball they used would have been a lot heavier and denser than what we are used to today! Chichen Itza has more ballcourts and the largest of any Maya center.



Jaguar Throne found in El Castillo pyramid.


Ceren, in El Salvador, is every archaeologist’s dream. This site was buried by volcanic ash (like Pompeii) and, as a consequence, has extraordinary preservation. The wet, humid environment in Central America is not very great for preservation, so usually only the hardiest of materials (like stone) survive after long periods of time. But, look at that picture below! The volcanic ash preserved even the carefully tilled rows of a maize field and the holes of each maize plant. The impressions of plants left behind in the volcanic ash told, without a doubt, archaeologists that the Maya cultivated maize, beans, squash, agave, cacao, chiles, cotton, malanga, and manioc.

Ceren was a farming village. These types of ‘commoner’ sites can sometimes be harder to identify and understand archaeologically, because the inhabitants didn’t have the means to leave lots and lots of expensive or big stuff. Archaeologists suspect many commoner houses were actually made of perishable materials, like clay and wood. These are the types of materials that decompose really quickly in Central America, so archaeologists sometimes have a hard time finding these houses. At Ceren, the volcanic ash preserved these types of houses, even the thatch roofing! Perhaps the volcanic eruption happened quickly, because many of the people left behind their things. This is really neat, too, because we can see what they were doing when the eruption happened.

Do you have questions about Maya archaeology in Central America? Ask me below!

Actun Tunichil Muknal is an archaeological site in a cave in Belize. This site is also known locally as 'ATM.' The Maya associated caves and water with the underworld, where many of the deities lived. The Maya traveled within caves to perform ritual ceremonies and give ritual offerings to the gods. The offerings may have included food, well-made ceramic vessels and stone tools, human blood, and, yes, even humans. This required travel through dark, narrow, and wet passages.





But! Caves are pretty awesome for preservation. Many of the artifacts are in excellent shape, so the archaeologists and tour guides at ATM have not moved any of the artifacts that were left behind. Everything is pretty much as it was left, with the addition of a steel ladder in some areas. ^.^ It is so awesome that my inner archaeologist squeals and faints from too much excitement.



Enjoy the pictures, because you are not allowed to take your camera anymore! People keep dropping their cameras on the skeletons and the artifacts, so cameras were banned. You can actually see a camera-shaped hole in the skull of a child.

The most famous skeleton in the cave is called the Crystal Maiden. A thick sheet of minerals have accumulated on many of the artifacts and skeletons and, in the right light, these minerals sparkle. A thinner sheet of minerals has collected on this skeleton, the Crystal Maiden, so it sparkles. Interesting fact, the skeleton may or may not be a female. Since archaeologists have agreed not to remove the artifacts for further analysis, it is harder to tell the sex of the skeleton.

XD you are cute. These are really cool and impressive (but maybe a tad scary??). Such majestic. Very wow.

Oh wow! You are so lucky to have been able to go to these places (of course as part of your study it would be expected of you to go but to me its lucky).

After seeing the ball courts, I see where they got the idea for the movie "The Road to El Dorado!"

This is neat. Do you have any personal photos of your travels?

Wow, this is all so fascinating. I've always been really intruiged by Pompeii, i didn't realise there were other sites like that. My friend spent a summer in Guatamala for her zoology degree, I'll need to see if she visited Tikal!

I'm going to Mexico this summer so was considering visiting Chichen Itza but I've heard it's quite touristy now? ._.

Thanks! I wish I had been able to see more archaeological sites in Belize and throughout Central America, but often field and laboratory work gets in the way. There are several others I have seen that are not included on this list. ^.^

Let me dig up some personal photos from other sites. I forgot I had dozens of personal photos.

There might be some other Pompeii like sites, too! I only know of Ceren and Pompeii, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few other around the world. I want to excavate them all.   

What was your friend studying in Guatemala?

I went to Chichen Itza approximately ten years ago, so I am not sure what it is like. There are some other very neat archaeological sites in the area that are like Chichen Itza. (The site of Mayapan comes to mind). You might find a less touristy area if you go to another archaeological site in the Yucatan Peninsula.

Lamanai
Lamanai is another archaeological site in Belize. It lies closer to the coast and is one of the longest inhabitated sites in the country. People lived there as late as the 16th century. You can even find Roman Catholic churches!


The Jaguar Temple


The High Temple

La Milpa
La Milpa is an archaeological site in northwestern Belize. It looks different from the other archaeological sites, because it has not been consolidated for tourism. In other words, it has not been cleaned up and conservators have not put the buildings back together.


That is what a lot of archaeological sites look like before they have been excavated and consolidated for tourism. Sort of just like a hill with trees. That hole at the base? That is either an old excavation unit or it might be a looter's trench. A looter's trench is a trench dug by looters to dig into a mound to remove artifacts. These artifacts are often sold, because the looter wants to support his family. Looting is discouraged for many reasons, those of which I will not go into here unless asked.


This is a chultun. A chultun is an underground storage area. These places are often cooler and damper. Unfortunately for the archaeologists, bugs like to live here, too.

Tikal
I have gone to Tikal twice, because you cannot see the entire site in one day. I still have not seen the entire site, yet.



This is one of the stairs you would have to climb to get to the top of a temple. If I remember my buildings correctly, I was mooned by a boy from this temple (I was on the ground watching everyone's stuff).


At Tikal, there are on-going excavations. These are not widely publicized, because archaeologists want to discourage looting. However, you can sometimes pay someone to take you to these areas, although you kind of have to hope they aren't leading you off-trail to rob you. o.0 This is one of those areas. The archaeologists found an underground area with painted murals.